New Branding for Old Masters: Why a Seemingly Forgotten Collecting Category Is on the Rise

Paintings by Old Masters have delivered some of the art market’s most notable highs in recent years, preeminent among them the Christie’s 2018 sale of Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi (ca. 1500) for $450 million, the highest price ever achieved for an artwork at auction. Since then, auction houses have been pushing to make the classic category as big a rainmaker as modern and contemporary art, which eclipsed Old Masters decades ago. Often, that means combining the two categor